The First Tree I Have Ever Cut Down

2018, Video, 24:20

This is the first time I have ever cut down a tree. As you can see, it took some effort. I set two cameras up to record the action: one still, one video. The still camera took a shot every thirty seconds. The cutting took approximately twenty-four minutes, start to finish. The action of doing it, and the cut down tree are both considered pieces by me.

I am untrained and it was physically exhausting, my technique was poor. I struck glancing blows several times throughout the course of it. I was using an ax far too small for the tree, it was inefficient.

I felt the need to cut down a tree to understand our impact and interaction with our environment.  It needed to be a live tree, otherwise it would not have been significant. How many trees do you indirectly cut down per year?

After completing this project, I paid for a charity to plant twelve trees in a deforested area, helping repair an ecosystem destroyed by humans.